Skemäta: A Bright Shining Hell 12"

Raleigh, North Carolina’s Skemäta are back with their second 12”, A Bright Shining Hell. While you can still expect the same furious, explosive d-beat hardcore you found on their debut, this time around they’ve dispensed with a lot of the fiddly bits and delivered something a bit more direct and concise, much as Sorry State favorites Sickoids honed and streamlined their sound when they moved from their first LP to their second 12”. It’s not so much that the music is any less complex, but the intricate riffs and rhythms are packed into a smaller space, delivered with a dizzying degree of speed, precision, and power. The result is a pressure cooker of a record that takes the apocalyptic fury of a band like Framtid and fuses it with the catchy songwriting of Totalitär. In a world of flash-in-the-pan d-beat bands that rip off a couple of Cimex riffs and then vanish into the ether, Skemäta stands alone as one of the most distinctive, original, and memorable bands in the genre.